Tag: #marketing

Brick-and-Mortar storefronts don’t fear a challenge as they take on the age of digitalization. Seeking a hands on experience, consumers look for ways to combine in-store shopping with the convenience of online shopping.

Take a look at how Kate Spade revolutionized window shopping. In their Kate Spade Saturday campaign, they employed digital window shops where customers could shop without ever stepping foot in a store. Talk about fashionable. Follow in the footsteps of brands like Kate Spade with our top five visual merchandising trends of 2018.

1. Dynamic Lighting

Turn on the lights! Lighting has a powerful impact with one fourth of consumers making an unplanned purchase because of it. Dynamic lighting involves the color of the light, the intensity, direction, and even movement that turns shoppers into customers.

To feature a product, place a brighter light on it. Using an incandescent lamp – which is sharper and brighter – can highlight its details and importance. Keep surrounding areas dim to focus attention. Bright lights in general tend to exude a positive vibe that can increase purchases. When using colored lights, match the colors of your packaging or product to a light in the same color family such as a hunter green package with a light green light or a deep red with a pink light. This will avoid unpleasant color clashing. Color also influences our mood. Remember that colors in the blue family will have more of a calming effect where reds tend to excite and stimulate.

2. Interactive Merchandising

On average, people spend 5-8 minutes in the fitting room. But what if you never have to step foot in a dressing room again? The use of virtual reality, coding technology, and motion sensors make shopping more interactive and digital.

Mac Cosmetics recently launched their “Virtual Try-on Mirror” that lets customers try different makeup styles without ever putting a drop of makeup on their skin. Meanwhile, UGG Australia’s touch screen displays allows customers to customize, order, and research products within the store. The lesson here? Get customers involved. Whether it be incorporating tablets for use on displays, in store demos, or digital kiosks, boost your strategy by offering opportunities for shoppers to engage.

Although it may hard to get your hands on some of this groundbreaking research, it can be helpful to analyze the psychology of buying until further developments are made. Getting to know the overall ambience of your store from the type of music to the warmth of lighting can cue shoppers to make a purchase. There are also options such as tracking consumer’s eye movements and psychological tricks like removing the dollar sign from price tags that might be more accessible than the more advanced EEG and fMRI s

4. Augmented Reality

Virtual reality helps consumers conceptualize a product in a way that was impossible before modern tech. Now, they can see products in action before ever making a purchase.

TopShop currently gives virtual reality glasses to shoppers so that they can feel like they are front seat by the runway, seeing the clothes be worn and real time and helping them visualize how they could incorporate the clothes into their own wardrobe. These augmented reality applications provide customers the chance to “try on clothes” or other products in a totally new way! You can get virtual reality glasses that put your shoppers into the right mindset or environment with videos and images that communicate your story and mission.

5. Minimalism

Keep it simple. Distractions are at an all time high, so it can be a refreshing change to clear the sensory clutter fogging our focus. Flashy decorations and displays are good attention grabbers, but they can ultimately distract from the true vision of a product.

Some retailers have manufactured entire spaces to reflect clean lines, sharp edges, and bright spaces. These kinds of setups allow you to showcase your product instead of hiding it. Use clearly defined lines which can be crafted from metal space that refines otherwise soft spaces. Neutral colors also contribute to the minimalist aesthetic and allow your product to pop. While you may not have control of your entire retail space, you can reflect the minimalist spirit in your displays using open space, whites and beiges, and avoiding overcrowding.

All five trends display a certain level of consumer centrism. The tools work to provide shoppers with an environment focused on them. The styles, technology, and techniques prime the shopper while also ramping up energy and excitement with cool features.

Website analytics has become my obsession lately. I can’t wait in the morning to switch on my laptop and see the colorful info-graphic representing the views and visits on my website. And believe me I can spend the whole day studying the figures because there is so much to learn from it. And more so, the analysis is a direct reflection of what the readers are looking for, which posts do they spend more time on and of course what are the topics relevant for them.

I can easily pick the posts and the keywords that have been driving maximum traffic on my website and this made me rethink the whole process. Like many other blogs, mine too started as a chronicle of my learning in the field of marketing. When I started, my posts were sporadic and my content wasn’t drawing much attention. As I read about effective content development and tried to include the tips in my writing, I could see the immediate impact. So, Hail Content!

But going back to the process, till now my posts used to be based on my most recent learning/experiences/readings. Going through the analytics I realized that readers keep going back to my older posts which talks about the topic they want to know more about. I quickly shifted my focus to KEYWORDS ANALYSIS because legit these are the words, phrases, terms and questions that people are searching online.

I know this is miles away from being a great discovery but I’m happy to have figured it out at last 😀 And the revised process is quite simple: Write what they want to read! Here is a list of Top 10 Marketing Keywords that btw is now my To-Do list 😛

Let’s say if I have 10 unread emails in my inbox, chances are that at least 3 of them are some kind of a marketing proposal. Marketing proposals are usually written by advertising and marketing agencies, design companies, or by individuals who are pitching an idea to a potential client. Who wouldn’t want to know about these ideas that can potentially uplift the existing marketing efforts and drive results. So I usually reserve my time for reading these emails and the hidden agenda (not so hidden anymore) is to know what’s new in the market, statistics that can change the game and most importantly what’s becoming obsolete.

Agencies usually cover a casket of communication channels including the traditional newspaper, television, radio and trendy social media platforms. But they also explore some rather unconventional channels to take the customers by surprise. If i were to use a nomenclature then this is typically known as Guerrilla Marketing – unconventional (read “in your face”) promotion of products and services with little budget to spend.

Here I want to talk about one such type of guerrilla marketing tactics that has garnered a self explanatory name for itself – Tissue Box Marketing. I am sure you are are not impressed yet and I don’t blame you. Having your logo and company information on a pack of tissues what’s the big deal right?! Here’s the big deal…

Guerrilla form of marketing falls under ATL (Above the Line) Marketing where the objective is to reach to the masses and spread awareness. As a marketeer I know that ATL strategies are hackneyed as hell because you do the usual mass media stuff like print ads, radio and flyer distribution at high foot fall areas. Yes, flyers in this digital day and age! we all know what happens when an overly colorful and informative piece of paper is shoved into our hands…a quick scan and you get rid of it in most cases.

*For me I keep anything that has home delivery service 😛

But what if this flyer was more than just a piece of paper? AHA moment!

Enters the idea of tissue box marketing which is extremely prevalent in Japan (not sure if it originated there). The pictures show that your messaging can be sophisticated or crude but you can be sure that the customer will make space for it in his pocket or purse. wallah! you got inside their pocket what else. As a marketer I find this as such an achievement because now every bearer of your tissue pack is an ambassador of your brand. Also, tissue paper as a product connects with the customers who use it for their personal hygiene. That for me is win – win.

The sheer simplicity and effectiveness of this revamped version of an old tactic has impressed me a lot. The only best thing that can top this would be distributing free food haha 😀